A simple association trick to use when introducing yourself

Assume that when people think of you, they will store your name, a mental picture of you, a few words they associate with you and a few stories about your behavior. From this they will make all the decisions they have to make about you.

Name association is a good start for promoting yourself because you can do it in a self-deprecating way. Decide what you want people to remember when they think of you. Then say things about yourself that create those images.

You can say,

“I’m just an old war-horse. I’ve been around here forever.”

or

“Back in 1967, when I started managing in this division …”

or

“I can look at this issue from several different perspectives. I started out in engineering, then went through marketing, and now I’m in product development. I can tell you, they look at the world differently in all those places.”